Anno 117: Pax Romana Accessibility Spotlight
Anno 117: Pax Romana is out on November 13 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, inviting players to step into the sandals of a Roman governor, sent out by the Empire to govern its provinces. The first Anno game to launch on consoles and PC simultaneously, Anno 117: Pax Romana offers a host of accessibility features to ensure as many players can enjoy the game as possible.
Anno 117: Pax Romana was designed with accessibility in mind. We spoke with Lead UI Designer Jan Wawrzik to learn more about the team’s approach to accessibility, the challenges of implementing accessibility for a builder game, and designing features for PC and consoles.
Anno 117: Pax Romana is the eighth installment in the Anno franchise. How did the team approach accessibility? Was the approach different than in the past?
Jan Wawrzik: For Anno 117: Pax Romana, we took accessibility into consideration from the start. During preproduction, a dedicated team of Game and UI Designers collaborated on researching and defining accessibility goals. These goals were then shared as guidelines across the production team. Our goal was to be accessible by design from the beginning. For this, we defined several guidelines for our Visual and UX teams to follow. As a result, elements such as color contrast, text size, and icon size were baked into our visual style guide and then implemented as part of a design system. We also reviewed industry-standard accessibility features and focused on those most beneficial to players within the context of a builder game.
Does the real-time builder strategy genre bring any unique challenges to accessibility? How did the team work through those?
JW: We recognized gaps in accessibility and made it a priority to address them.
